Norman Mailer: Works and Days

Norman Mailer: The Conservative Leftist

Interview by Jan Henry in the Brooklyn Heights Press, Mailer's neighborhood paper at 142 Columbia Heights. Mailer describes himself as a 'Left Existential Conservative' and discusses Deaths for the Ladies (62.3) and the book he is working on: 'Frankie and Johnny: The Presidential Papers of Norman Mailer' (later 63.37).

“Norman Mailer: The Conservative Leftist.” Interview by Jan Henry. Brooklyn Heights Press, 30 May 1963, 1, 3.

In his neighborhood paper — Brooklyn Heights is his home district since the 142 Columbia Heights move-in of late spring 1962 — Mailer describes himself as a “Left Existential Conservative” (a more elaborated cousin of the “left conservative” self-description in the April 1963 Playboy letter 63.27), and discusses Deaths for the Ladies (62.3) and the book he is working on, given the working title “Frankie and Johnny: The Presidential Papers of Norman Mailer” — the volume that would be published in November 1963 as The Presidential Papers (63.37). The discarded working titles for 63.37The Devil Revisited and Frankie and Johnny, Or, The Murder of Good Ideas — are recorded in Lennon’s 63.37 entry.

First published: 1963-05-30
Form: interview
Lennon & Lennon: 63.28
Cite as: /works/1963-05-30-conservative-leftist
Last updated: 2026-05-27